Answer these four questions first

Video Transcript

I have spent my life building new things, >> [music] >> actioning my curiosity, and taking risks to put stuff out into the world that might not succeed. At the end of this video, I'm going to be announcing something that I think you will benefit from if you join me while we build our things together. But for now, I want to talk to you about the four questions that I ask myself before I start any new project or new business [music] to see if it fits into my life. I believe that too many people who are full-time employed dive into side projects without clearly defining the following things.

There's a lot to go around here, and there are hundreds of questions you could ask yourself and thousands of things that prevent you from getting started or that you can faff with before you get started. [music] So, I've whittled this down to four really simple things that I ask myself before I get [music] started. And I think one of the important things for me to state up front is that this is what I'm doing right now. I am asking myself these questions.

I am setting realistic definitions of what success is, >> [music] >> um of how these businesses should run, and the nuance of what they all mean to me in my life right now. That's what this YouTube channel is is about. This is one of the things that I'm building and I'm making time for and figuring out how it fits into my life and what the end result is. The first question that I think you need to ask yourself [music] is what is it that you want from this side project or business or hobby or income stream?

[music] Is it just a side project? Are you trying to build a billion-dollar business? Do you want it to replace your job? Is it supposed to pay off your house?

Is it supplementing your income? And which of those [music] things is realistic for you to achieve in the context of your life and how much time you have to give to this thing? And the reason I start here is because I spent a lot of my 20s and 30s thinking that I was interested in financial success. Thinking that the only measure of a successful business was a few money.

And if you didn't get that exit for millions and millions and millions of dollars, then it really wasn't worth it. And that's not the same for everybody. I think that you need to spend time analyzing your own interests, your own outcomes, your own definitions of success. And I've got a whole video that I'll link to below in the description about defining your own success and moving forward with that that you haven't inherited it from other people.

So, if you are trying to build a billion-dollar business, that's amazing. But then the parameters are different. Then you need to go and find venture capital. And once you found venture capital, you need to 10x their money in 5 years.

And if you're not on that trajectory, then you probably shouldn't raise venture capital. And you can start to see why asking this question is really important. Because if this is just a fun side project that's satiating your curiosity, amazing. That means that you can have fun with it.

You can work on it 1 hour every few weeks and hope for the best over a period of years. But, there are other ways to think about how to build these businesses. One of the ways that I'm thinking of building my side projects is allocating a financial goal for each one that makes it a complete project. So, for one of my projects called byhomehelper.com, which is a home bidding tracking app for expats in the Netherlands who are buying homes, the really simple goal is to get 1,000 users every year.

That's it. Because if I get those users, it pays for my mortgage every year. Which means this one little side project can buy me a house. Now, that's not how a lot of people think about entrepreneurial businesses.

They try to think of them as these big shots that they're taking. And if it doesn't work all together as soon as possible, then it's dead. Now, I just want to challenge that in your life. I think that a full well-rounded life considers what you currently do, how you currently earn money, where you can fit this new thing into your life, and how it can financially complement the things that you're already doing.

A lot of times, I coach people, and it's binary. They either want a full-time job, or they want a side project that takes over their full-time job. And I think that we need to look at more of a transitional way for our side projects. That you can keep your full-time job, and over a period of a few years, you can also build a side project that generates you income.

The next question that I think is important for you to ask is how does this project fit into your existing life? Now, when I say that, I mean >> [music] >> everything. And I'll use myself as the example. I don't have kids.

I don't have to go to sports events for them on the weekends. I have hobbies that mostly inform the life that I want to live with my businesses. I don't have pets anymore. I don't have a full-time job.

I exercise five to six days a week. I watch 1 hour or 2 hours of TV occasionally, and I like to read. I play music. I do all of these things that now need to fit into my life with a new side project.

So, that leaves me with a very set number of hours in a day, a week, a month, a year to build a side project. And then, >> [snorts] >> the reason this is important is this informs downstream of the success you should be planning for. So, if you decide that after analyzing your week and the ideal week for you and where this new thing fits in, whether it's a 2 hours on a Friday evening, if you can only allocate 1 hour a month to this project, it's a hobby. It's a fun thing that you do to explore and experiment once a month for 1 hour.

If you want it to be a bit more of a real side project that generates income over a shorter period of time, you're going to have to figure out how to carve time out for this thing more frequently. And then just stick to that. That's it. Be realistic.

You don't have to stop doing all your hobbies. If you do If you play paddle on a Tuesday and a Thursday, well, is this business more or less important than playing paddle? Maybe pick Thursday and instead of playing paddle, go ahead and build this business and start your side project or start investigating and find a co-founder. This is why it's really important that first you decide what kind of business this is or side project or whatever, and then how it fits into your life.

Because if you want a billion-dollar business, but you don't have any time in your life to build that billion-dollar business, something has to change and give. Maybe you need a divorce. Maybe you need to find a somebody else to take care of your kids. Maybe you need to change jobs and change countries.

Who knows? Depends on what your level of priority is for this particular thing and the lifestyle that you currently lead. And then getting into the nitty-gritty of the product itself. I hear from hundreds of people every year the ideas they've got, the amazing app they want to build.

Everything is incredible. And they're solving this and this and this and this and this. And that's the thing I think we need to address next. >> [music] >> Is once you have an idea of what the project is and what you want from it and how it fits into your life, the next thing I want you to focus on very, very intensely is exactly which single problem are you solving?

Now, the key pattern here is if you have to give me an answer that includes the word and, then it's too many problems that you're solving. So, for By Home Helper, we are solving the problem of confused expats who don't know how to buy a home in the Netherlands. That's it. There's no and.

It's not confused expats and locals. It's not first-time buyers and second-time buyers. It's first time buyers in the Netherlands who are expats and are overwhelmed by buying a home. That's it.

So, for your side project, ask yourself, what is the one problem? And if it's more than one problem, stop and rethink it and go back down to one problem. And finally, the question that I think we need to focus on more than most in the world where anybody can build an app with AI relatively easily, is when you are building this product [music] and solving this problem, who is the single person you are solving this problem for? Now, it's easy to be generalized and vague here, but the same rule applies as the last question.

If you use the word and, you're targeting too many people for the first version of this thing you're building. Everybody worries about scalability before they have a user. You don't need to build a scalable tech stack. You don't need to solve for 13 different user profiles or ICPs, ideal customer profiles.

You need to solve for one to validate if this idea will be used by that one ideal customer ever. And if you can't focus on a single customer, it means that the problem you're trying to solve isn't specific enough and the person you're trying to target isn't niche enough. So again, you could easily target 35 to 55-year-old men who are trying to start their first paddle tournament, but need training specifically to get fit for that. Now, you're a personal trainer and that's your target audience.

But if you're a personal trainer and you're targeting 20- to 30-year-olds and 35- to 50-year-olds, men and women in Cape Town and Joburg, now you're trying to get too many people to buy into a single problem that you're solving. So, go back to the drawing board, remove the ands, and pick what you think is the most attractive customer for you to target to begin with. And don't start any of the building, the thinking, or the planning until you understand your answers to these four questions. So, let's quickly recap.

The four questions are: Number one, what do you want from this project? Number two, how does the project fit into your life? Question three is which single problem are you solving? If you have to use the word and, you're solving too many problems.

Scale back to a single problem. And then finally, who is the exact user or customer that you're targeting? >> [music] >> Not broad and not ands, think of a user, think of an individual, and target that person. >> [music] >> That's it.

Those are the four questions that I think you need to honestly ask yourself and the people in your life before you start the side project or business you're thinking of starting. So, if you've made it this far in the video, I want to quietly announce a new project that I'm building called nobullship.co. And really simply, it is an 8-week build sprint to help people like you work with me [music] to build your ideas from zero to your first users in 8 weeks. That's it.

>> [music] >> It's not a course where you have to learn a whole lot of course material to participate. It's a program where you have to join with an idea, be willing to look silly while we go through everything that you're building, and be willing to just build with other people. If you're interested, head to nobullship.co right now.